Pepper Heading For Ussr As Junket Season Takes Off

August 23, 1987

AFTER A 42-YEAR ABSENCE, REP. CLAUDE PEPPER is returning to the Soviet Union this week. It`s his first trip behind the Iron Curtain since his controversial 1945 meeting with Josef Stalin that contributed to Pepper`s defeat for re- election to a third term in the U.S. Senate.

This trip, however, promises to be much less eventful, since Soviet officials have turned down the Miami Democrat`s request for a meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The congressman, who was labeled ``Red Pepper`` by his opponents during the 1940s because of his liberal stands, also no longer seems to be out of step politically in his foreign policy views.

Pepper, chairman of the House Rules Committee, will lead a congressional delegation on a two-week trip that will include stops in Scotland and Paris. But the congressman`s aides last week were unable to provide any details about Pepper`s return to the Soviet Union. When asked the purpose of the trip, Pepper spokeswoman Rochelle Jones replied, ``To meet with Soviet officials about the obvious outstanding issues between the two countries.``

As of Friday, three days before the delegation`s scheduled departure, Rules Committee staffers still did not have any information from the Soviet Embassy as to which Soviet officials the visiting U.S. congressmen would be meeting.

But August is the peak month for congressional junketing, and Pepper, a golf enthusiast, at least will get to check out the fairways in Edinborough. The congressman is scheduled to return on Sept. 8, the day he turns 87 years old.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., is off to Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador and Panama, beginning Monday. Graham, a Senate supporter of aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, will meet with the presidents of Guatemala and El Salvador during the six-day fact-finding trip, and is scheduled to confer with one or more members of the ruling party in Managua.

The trip, Graham`s first to the region since arriving in the Senate last January, is part of the senator`s personal effort to establish himself as an authority on Central America. He will not be accompanied by other members of Congress.

Rep. Larry Smith, D-Hollywood, will head to South Korea in early September on a four-day trip sponsored by Georgetown University`s Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative foreign policy think tank. Rep. Dan Mica, D-Lake Worth, had planned to travel to Italy during the first week of September, but that trip was canceled last week.

Sen. Lawton Chiles, D-Fla., who is up for re-election next year, and Reps. E. Clay Shaw Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale, and Tom Lewis, R-North Palm Beach, are staying stateside during the congressional August recess.